General Motors is fined $35 million over deadly defect

WASHINGTON — Federal safety regulators slapped General Motors with a record $35 million fine Friday for taking more than a decade to disclose an ignition-switch defect in millions of cars that has been linked to at least 13 deaths.

Under an agreement with the Transportation Department, GM admitted it was slow to inform regulators, promised to report problems faster and submitted to more in-depth government oversight of its safety operations.

The fine — less than a day's revenue for GM — was the maximum allowed under the law.

"Literally, silence can kill," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. "GM did not act and did not alert us in a timely manner."

Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said the Justice Department, which is conducting a parallel criminal investigation, should fine the company $1 billion and bring charges against GM engineers and their superiors. "That's the only way you're going to change GM's behavior."

Congress is also investigating GM, and the automaker faces hundreds of lawsuits. The company has acknowledged knowing that the switches in its small cars had problems since at least 2001. But it was not until February that it began recalling 2.6 million of the cars.

Automakers are required by federal law to report safety defects to the government within five days of discovering them.